New Transformers 3 Trailer is Explosively Awesome [Updated]

The teaser trailer brought us to the first moon landing and the Super Bowl TV spot introduced us to the action. Now, the first full trailer and second official theatrical trailer for Transformers: Dark of the Moon is online, bringing with it the story.

Seemingly everyone involved with the Transformers movies thus far, from star Shia LaBeouf to director Michael Bay, has admitted to the faults of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and promise much, much better with their third and final go. We cannot deny that Transformers 3 looks promising, but we haven’t had a look into the story and characters yet… until now.

While the Apollo 11 teaser trailer gave us a very unique intro to the story for the next Transformers, it was the brief Super Bowl spot that pulled us into the action, right in the middle of a horrifying invasion of Chicago. Many new Decepticons, much larger ones at that, scoured the city and and the visual effects were miles ahead of the rushed production of its predecessor.

Let’s put that into context with the new full trailer for Transformers: Dark of the Moon:

A common criticism for the last Transformers movie is that they added so many characters without actually adding any character to them. Revenge of the Fallen was weighed down by a convoluted plot and countless nameless characters whose only purpose was to justify an extended Hasbro toy line. From what we’ve seen from Dark of the Moon so far, there are twice as many characters (Cybertronians and humans) in TF3, so we can only hope they serve a legitimate role in the story writer Ehren Kruger put together. We can at least say, they all look better in their action sequences!

Update: Now Check out the first theatrical poster for Dark of the Moon:

CLICK TO ENLARGE

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The first teaser gave us our first look at what we believe is the Ark (an Autobot ship from Cybertron) from the perspective of Neil Alden Armstrong, but this new trailer shows the Ark crashing, but not revealing when that occurs. From the original Transformers cartoon and the Beast Wars animated series in the 90s, the Ark crashed millions of years ago and became the base of operations for the Autobots after awakening from a volcanic eruption in the 80s. We can expect that the film will explain much more of the backstory of the Autobots and Decepticons and how they came to Earth. Here’s a little side-by-side put together by our own Paul Young of the Ark from the trailers and the one from the original animated series.

The one redeeming quality of Revenge of the Fallen was how they amped up the bad-ass factor of Optimus, emphasizing him as not only the poster bot of the franchise but the greatest warrior of the Aubots. In this trailer, that idea is taken to an entirely new level as Optimus seemingly comes from nowhere againt all odds, to wreak havoc on a group of Decepticons (parts of this seen were shown in the Super Bowl teaser). In this sequence, he’s again augmented with additional parts which allow him to fly, like we saw when he merged with Jetfire (an old Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird) in the last movie.

The set pieces are much more massive and bring the story much closer to home, as they tear apart the City of Chicago. From a visual standpoint, Michael Bay has taken the franchise to an entirely new level and from this trailer alone, we can recommend this as an IMAX experience worthy of the extra dollars.

Some quick observations of note are that they don’t really hone in on any of the new autobot characters, and we know there are many from the set pictures that surfaced during production. That’s not at all a bad thing, and it actually allows them to slowly reveal more as we approach July. The less they show before the film hits, the better. You’ll also notice that Megan Fox’s replacement, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley doesn’t speak a word.

Story isn’t the selling point of the Transformers films but it’s important that it’s at least compelling and enjoyable. What are your expectations now for TF3?

Transformers regulars Shia LaBeouf, John Turturro, Josh Duhamel and Tyrese Gibson return for Dark of the Moon along with our favorite Autobot heroes and are joined by series newcomers, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Patrick Dempsey, Kevin Dunn, with John Malkovich and Frances McDormand. Let us not forget that Leonard Nimoy will be voicing the mighty Sentinel Prime.

Transformers: Dark of the Moon hits regular theaters and IMAX on July 1st, in 2D and 3D.
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